Help Experiencing rapid battery drain...

[pantlesspenguin]

As of yesterday evening, my battery has been draining noticeably faster than usual. Suggestions?

ETA: I haven't downloaded any new apps recently so I'm really not sure what may be causing this, & I'm at a loss on how to find out.

 

[famished]

Are you using the power control widget to turn off things like wi-fi, BT, GPS and screen brightness as needed? Also, maybe let your battery drain completely, then recharge with the phone off until it's fully charged again?

 

[pantlesspenguin]

Are you using the power control widget to turn off things like wi-fi, BT, GPS and screen brightness as needed? Also, maybe let your battery drain completely, then recharge with the phone off until it's fully charged again?

Yeah I do use that widget, but I don't think I touched it @ all yesterday. And yesterday my battery did drain completely (well close enough, it was below 5% when I put it on the charger) & charged it overnight. I didn't recharge it w/ the phone off, though, but I was sleeping so I wasn't using it.

 

[gohausmachine]

Famished has got the right idea. Even though you stated that you haven't downloaded any new apps it's still possible that you've got some sort of app running unnecessarily in the background or using GPS.
Your best bet would be to pay attention to what you use and how fast your battery appears to drain as you use it. If something seems to be draining your battery quickly as you're using it then perhaps that is you battery killer. After that uninstall it for a day see how the next day goes and if your issues are still there then focus on another.

 

[pantlesspenguin]

Thanks for the advice, but see that's what makes my situation so weird! I WASN'T using my phone when the battery started draining! I plugged it in on the way home from the gym. When I got home it was around 75% charged. I worked on a paper for a little bit & then I got a text. That's when I noticed my phone had drained a lot. I rebooted it, but it still seemed to be draining a lot. Today it's a BIT better, but not as good as normal.

 

[gohausmachine]

Aha now that is very odd. If theres nothing you can find as far as an app draining your battery then perhaps you should contact t-mobile and see if a replacement may be in order. I know thats not the most ideal route but sometimes its the only way.

 

[pantlesspenguin]

Good ol' T-Mo, lol. Thanks. I may just have to contact them to see if they have any idea what the issue could be. My handset seems to work perfectly otherwise & I'd hate to exhange it just to get one that has an odd bug (plus I'd have to get it configured to my liking again). I'll keep an eye on my battery & see if it clears up on its own. If not.....

 

[gohausmachine]

Well maybe you could ask for a battery exchange. They probably won't but it never hurts to ask

 

[pantlesspenguin]

Well maybe you could ask for a battery exchange. They probably won't but it never hurts to ask

Well, one time when I had a 9700 they actually sent me a new battery w/ no need to return the old one. So, I guess anything's possible!

 

[dntnvme]

I am new to the droid and mytouch family so what is the normal battery life of these phones? My phone last about 12hours with phones calls, texting, surfing, pandora, and automatic task killer running. Is this good? Curious????

 

[gohausmachine]

I am new to the droid and mytouch family so what is the normal battery life of these phones? My phone last about 12hours with phones calls, texting, surfing, pandora, and automatic task killer running. Is this good? Curious????

DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT use task killers. Android handles it's processes in such a way that task killers hurt your performance (especially in 2.2 which is what you have).
Also 12 hours is really good I use my phone all day and get 12-14 so you're spot on.

 

[bjumpsnota]

It may very well be a coincidence but on another board there was talk using usb debug mode would help battery life. After doing this I now get 12-15 hrs as opposed to 9.

Conditioning your battery helps as well.

 

[pantlesspenguin]

It may very well be a coincidence but on another board there was talk using usb debug mode would help battery life. After doing this I now get 12-15 hrs as opposed to 9.

Conditioning your battery helps as well.

Thanks. What's the debug mode? I currently use SuperPower which is a setting tweaker and that seems to help my battery a lot. I've had that installed since the first week I got the phone.

Within the last day my battery has kind of gone back to normal but is still a bit on the low side. Maybe it'll even out soon.

Btw, just saw you were from KCMO. Cool .

 

[famished]

I've been getting pretty good battery life. My Behold II would drain after about 6 or 7 hours down to like 18 %. My MT4G is down to around 46% by the end of my day. I set it to charge before I go to sleep- so that's probably around 15 hours of use with a bit left in the tank.

If you're going through things that drain your phone- also keep it on silent instead of vibrate and check the frequency of updates, installs, syncing- you'll probably want to disable most of that stuff or set it to not update automatically or so often.

 

[bjumpsnota]

Thanks. What's the debug mode? I currently use SuperPower which is a setting tweaker and that seems to help my battery a lot. I've had that installed since the first week I got the phone.

Within the last day my battery has kind of gone back to normal but is still a bit on the low side. Maybe it'll even out soon.

Btw, just saw you were from KCMO. Cool .

To be honest with you I have no idea what debug mode does. On tmo there was a thread about it helping battery life.

Go to settings>applications>development and make sure usb debugging is checked

 

[EmceeGeek]

12 hours is excellent! i wish i could get that on android.
i wish we had the task killer that the galaxy s phones have. damnit samsung!

 

[pantlesspenguin]

I nearly forgot about this thread! I selected the debug mode & that seemed to work. I don't know if that was the solution or if it was just a coincidence, though. I had a similar issue w/ my Blackberry. One time the battery decided it wanted to drain rapidly, but it eventually evened itself out. It could've been an app going wonky or something.

Thanks for all the help!

Also, Emcee, like gohaus said you really DON'T need a task killer. They do more harm than good.

 

[EmceeGeek]

DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT use task killers. Android handles it's processes in such a way that task killers hurt your performance (especially in 2.2 which is what you have).
Also 12 hours is really good I use my phone all day and get 12-14 so you're spot on.

What do you mean it hurts performance? What if you don't constantly have it running?

 

[gohausmachine]

If you're using a task killer chances are you're killing a lot of the same tasks over and over. While killing them initially may give you a little speed boost those processes are going to stay back up. When you force the system to stop processes and them it reopens them you are forcing your phone to use more resources than necessary. There have been plenty of threads about this and even a phandroid article.

Edit: I found an article that goes in depth
http://geekfor.me/faq/you-shouldnt-be-using-a-task-killer-with-android/